That sufficiently burned me up enough to cast me off of Facebook and switch to Google+.

FB is a time suck as it is. I don't really mind the privacy issues, I figure anything I post on the Internet is public. I can deal with stupid interface choices. But why would they remove that picture? It's their right I guess, I'm using their service for free and, in doing so, submit myself to their rules. So I'm just choosing to no longer use it.

I'm moving to a different slaughterhouse where I am more free to oink as I wish.

So many reasons i have left blogging: Work, kids, houses. but many bloggers have these things.

Really it was the skeptical community and last years NECSS that really took the wind out of my sails. I even started writing a long post detailing all the issues I found with NECSS, the recent "don't be a dick" meme, and the skeptic community as a whole.

Frankly even that bored me. I couldn't finish it. I think Tom has it right. Skepticism is something you do, not something you are. I just couldn't get into the community part of it. Frankly, I didn't care of most if the people I met there were going to be friends with me or not, and the "luminaries" were emotionally unavailable when I met them and made me feel like they really couldn't be bothered with me. I'll note that the exception was Bob Novella who talked with me for a while about a few things including my Skeptic's Bingo iPhone app.

While I'm on this theme of having no time, being put off by the skepticism community, and iPhone apps. I have another one brewing and I have redone Bingo to be easier to read and use. But I have finished neither and therefore have released neither. Again, no time, loss of enthusiasm, etc. I don't know if or when they will ever be released.

I hope I get my spark back. I've been trying to figure out how I might get reacquainted. First off, I am never at my computer. So I downloaded Blogsy for the iPad (this post was written on it). My iPad is always with me, perhaps I can get some thoughts down. I also have a couple of ideas for books I would like to write, and may use this blog to throw around ideas. Perhaps, if I can get my readership back, you folks would Iike to play with some of these ideas I have, beat them up a bit, smooth them out.

This post take a very circumlocuitous route to get to my point. Sorry.

Interaction with many of my Facebook friends is often similar to the greater scope of debate. If economy is in the news, some of us talk about what is better to do. If illegal immigration comes up, we talk about that. Turns out I have a relatively diverse group of friends.

Economics needs a skeptical eye pointed at itAnyway, I have one friend that posts article after article of doom and gloom about the economy. One of them even predicted that come October we wont even be able to recognize our country. I searched for 5 minutes and found another economic article that explained how things will be getting better, and perhaps the housing market will take longer.

Another recent one, a friend posted that the stimulus is killing us, and I found another article about how we actually didnt do enough spending and need to do more despite the debt and budget deficit (I'm sure his article was from a respected economist, and mine was from another, Paul Krugman who won a nobel prize).

When it comes to economics, I hereby proclaim I am as in the dark as most people when it comes to biology, medicine or quantum mechanics. Pointing a skeptical eye towards all these economic claims, on both sides will take a lot of time, and I hope to do a blog post on it one of these days. I can fully sympathize with people who are confused when Joe Mercola says Vaccines are bad, and then the CDC and other people say how good they are.

The key is to verify the claims and see which side does more lying and stretching to make their point. This is what I hope to do in my future post.

Do increased taxes mean economic or personal doom?But until then, here is the way I see the economy and taxes. They are not as related as most people think. There are a number of times when taxes were higher than now and debt and deficit dropped (post WWII and Clinton years among others. In those very times the economy expanded very well. There are other times where the reverse happened.

So it is demonstrably wrong to say "the economy will shrink and people will leave if we raise taxes", that causation is not concluded. There are obviously more variables in that equation than that. For example, in 1999, 4-7 million people have left this country for countries with higher taxes (these are non-governmental Americans). Further, the US is the only country that still taxes you if you are living abroad. Some certainly left because work sent them there, but for the most part its because they prefer benefits of living abroad.

The point is the taxes-economy relationship is not as simple as free market people will have you believe. It's there to some degree, but it simply is not the whole story. It reminds me of a control system where we try to make changes on something we can adjust to create a response from a system we desire. I am suggesting that our controlled inputs (tax rate and spending) should be raised and lowered, respectively, until the economy is in a more comfortable position.

As I mentioned before, there are some who claim that spending should not be lowered right now. I'm am sure I don't have to link to the vociferous opposition to this view. I contend that there is spending reduction that could and should happen. The military is bloated, Health and Human Services and Education are both extremely expensive and a new effort to reign in costs on these should be tried. The spending Krugman is thinking of would go towards projects, research, business development. But for this, I want to focus on taxes.

Rich people whining about nothingWhile I hear a lot of whining about how raising taxes on the richest 5% is going to doom the country, I simply don't see it. I have yet to see a compelling argument for that view, other than "its common sense" as if that closes the case. Some rich people agree with me. We aren't talking about raising them to oblivion, we are talking about raising them 4-5%. There is no argument against the that this would bring in extra revenues needed right now. Quite the reverse. Let's remember, after WWII when the economy was in sad shape,the rich were taxed at rates of 80-94% (and when I say rich, i mean incomes starting at 200-400K depending on the year). Wow! Somehow they survived, somehow the economy grow, somehow the country prospered. Lets not forget, this was in the 50's that the conservative relish with nostalgia.

By "other rich guys" I mean the 400 other US billionaires. Maybe they could show us economic skeptics, that they can be trusted to use that vast wealth to stimulate the economy and reduce suffering on their own.

What was the result? A measly 10% of them signed up for this. Let's keep in mind, these are billionnairres. Most of them multibilionairres. The lowest end of these folks, if they pledged, would still have 500 million left after this program. At a small earning rate of 5%, they would still be making 25 million dollars/year by sitting on their thumbs.

They wouldn't even have to give the money to a charity, if they balk at efficiencies of them. They could do what they claim to do with that money anyway, they could invest in promising businesses, and not expect a return on that investment, they could take no shares. Any number of these things could be done, improving the economy, improving the jobless rate, reducing suffering. But they didn't do this when things are bad after they benefited more when times were good.

And at the end of that investment...they would still be stinking rich with a huge income.

This is not a very impressive group of people.

So when I hear that rich people (now I switched to those making 250K and above) are complaining about a 4% increase in their taxes, to a rate that they were at just 10 years ago, I just have to laugh.

This last one is what set me off to break a long spell of not writing anything due to real life stress and time limitations. This type of law is wrong on so many levels. Of course we should be able to record the activities of publically paid officials, especially when they are in public areas. If the video can misrepresent the situation, then we let a court sort it out. But people are being put in jail for recording officers who they think are abusing their power, and they should have every right to do so! I’m calling my congressmen and senators, this is fundamentally a bad law.

The funniest part, is that if you look at the comments to each of these articles, you will notice that there is a number of people who state something to the effect of how this is horrible government impinging on their rights. Often blame goes to Obama. It’s the state governments! It’s a peek into what sort of things we can expect from a libertarian country. No thanks! I’d like to know that whatever state I go into in our single country, some basic rules and rights and opportunities remain the same.

I fully endorse the mockery of religion, especially larger religions that expect people who do not share their beliefs to pay attention to their silly rules. Disallowing people to draw historical figures, like Mohammed, is an idiotic rule. If you like the rule, don't draw him. However I will:

Tons of people have written on this, but as this blog is really for me, I wanted to get these thoughts down. Further, the focus elsewhere has mostly been on how skepticism is, in fact a more open minded position than the woo flavor of the day. This video sums up that position perfectly, so I won't go into that here.

What I wanted to discuss is why people think that. Recently, I have been encountering a lot of this "Don't be so closed minded" attitude from people around me. When I examine my own speech, and try to put myself in the other persons shoes, I can see why they might think such a thing.

These aren't stupid people, and they aren't making money by selling alternative medicine, nor are they chiropractors, astrologers, or anything like that where they have a financial advantage for promoting a particular brand of pseudoscience. They honestly believe that Joe Mercola is a good source for health information, or that vaccines cause autism, or that doctors have one single modality for improving health (a pill).

They didn't get there through blind faith, when they read something crappy or dangerous like Natural News, they think they are doing research. How can they know differently? They didn't go to school for science, they haven't done a PhD where you necessarily have to drill down deep to get a fully understanding of a concept, they have never had a need to understand multiple perspectives of a concept (especially perspectives that you don't already agree with)in order to wean out what claims are supported by evidence and what are not.

These are tasks that skeptics tend to do all on their own, without guidance. But without that tendency shared by skeptics, or without some sort of training to do it, or without the desire to even listen to perspective that go against their preconceived notions, how can those people (and let's not fool ourselves, we are talking about the majority of people) know that doing some reading, or listening to someone who looks like a doctor, or listening to a trusted friend, isn't the same thing as weaning out truth?

So when a person has a knowledgebase, that includes something like "there is energy in your body that can be manipulated by needles", and a skeptic says "that's not true", it's not really a surprise that they would call the skeptic closed minded. Further, the person, for the most part, will not know how many blog posts, how many journal articles, how many test results, and how much research the skeptic has gone through to actually get to the position he or she holds. Without that knowledge of how the skeptic has acquired their disdain for the woo, the skeptic does in fact just seem closed minded.

For the most part, I don't think skeptics enjoy dissecting claims without having the outlet to share. That is why some of us have blogs, some do podcasts, some simply get into conversations on topics. However, if we really want to teach, if we really want to make any sort of stride into the mind of a person who is wasting money or harming themselves with pseudoscience, it is important to get your thoughts compiled into the realm of their preconceived notions.

For example, when someone talks to me about a soul, I often ask what color it is. I haven't said, "souls don't exist". When they tell me its invisible, I ask the next question about weight, then the next about size, then location, etc etc. I'll sometimes ask about how it works with twins, or miscarriages. For the most part, I can enter into a conversation on an equal plane as the woo, and not appear closed minded. These sorts of questions don't say "you are wrong", they say, "tell me more about it".

That isn't to say I can bring people to the light each time I try. Hey, I can't even be sure it has ever turned someone totally off of woo. But it sure is better than having the conversation ending with "You are being closed minded".

From my experience, if someone tells you that you are being closed minded, you are probably coming off that way. Step back, ask some questions based on your knowledge, or delineate how you came to your conclusions.

I havent written for a while, real life has gotten in the way, kids, houses, work. On the bright side, we we will probably have our first industrial product shipped this year. On the bad side, less blogging, less time to point the skeptical eye at events and announcements. And less time to bring out the first update for Skeptic's Bingo. Sad.

So today we are talking about Pokeberries! Woohoo! Did you know that the dark dye that can be extracted from these berries can improve solar cells output by 2x? Did you know the pokeberries are from a weed that grows almost everywhere in the world and therefore are very cheap? Did you know that this method could " double the energy production of today’s flat cells at a fraction of the cost"? Does this sound familiar? Did you know that universities and companies like to hype up technologies long before they have even begun to be proven out?

Perhaps it has, but none of the available information delineates this. Lets take a closer look. First the background.

The actual idea is as follows: There is a solar cell technology that is a bit different than what is commonly used. Most solar panels are made from silicon slices that have been doped in a way that lets them convert incident light into electrons. Alternatively, but similarly, some solar cells are made on a flexible substrate by laying down a thin film of material that can perform the same function. Other proposals for solar cells are wide and varied. One common theme is to create a three dimensional surface so that more light get absorbed.

So this new technology incorporates these same ideas, flexible substrate, larger surface area for incident light, and other features, but the places that actually trap the light are made from a polymer. I don't see a reason why this wouldn't work. Other incarnations of the same idea provide some improvement.

What are the key claims?

This solar cell is cheaper than other technologies, so much cheaper that is enables deployment in scenarios unavailable to normal solar cells.

This solar cell produces 2x the power than a "normal" solar cell.

This solar cell can collect more light at oblique angles than a "normal" solar cell.

I quoted "normal" because its hard to say what is normal these days. On houses, the most common type is the silicon based flat panels. But solar farms can use other technologies, like focused light with stirling engines, or even photovoltaics that are2x to 4x more efficient than a residential solar cell (these are known as full spectrum cells and are far more expensive, but you need less becuase you can concentrate the light).

So, the first question is, could these really be cheap enough to provide a boon to the solar industry? Well, when you have a panel installed, how much of the cost is associated with the cell and how much for the rest of the installation? Well let's do an example.

A typical solar installation is around 2000 watts. That means that you put enough panels up to make 2000 watts on on average on sunny days. During the day, you may get more than this depending on the sun, sky and time of year. But often you get less, like when its cloudy or night time. Most families don't use a full 2000 watts all the time, so the extra gets sold to the power company (or charges batteries), and then when power is needed but there is no sun, the power is returned from the power company.

Prices for silicon solar cells is as low as $1.75/watt. But when placed into modules for a large installation, when multiple cells are strung together and modules (generally 125 watts each) are electrically tied together, the price increases to about $4.23/watt. Then, in order to send the extra power to the power company you need an inverter which costs about $0.72/watt (or charge batteries which cost about 20 cents per watt, but you will require a charge controller also for extra cost).

So, then you have to get it installed which adds about 100% of the panel costs, so the cost of an installation is about $9.00/watt. The point of throwing all these numbers out there is that, even if the cost of the solar cell dropped to $0.00 the cost of an installation would still be quite expensive. The cells are a big part of the cost, but not even close to a majority of the cost.

The next claim is that it can create 2x the power of a normal cell. Can it? Well let's go to the source. The technology (which interestingly, does not seem to have US patent protection), was licensed to Fibercell inc (who really should buy a mac and use iweb to get just a basically decent website made). They have only one single performance graph on their website and it is shown to the right. This graph shows cumulative power over time (otherwise known as energy). It's true, there are times during the day where the slope of the Fibercell curve is 2x that of a normal silicon cell. But that hardly matters, what is important is how much energy it supplies over the whole day. If the 2x power could be sustained, then it would end up with 2x the energy over the whole day. Clearly this is not the case. The very graph they present to show how good it is, shows that in fact, it performs exactly as well as conventional solar cells.

One final question on that graph, for which I do not have an answer, why is the power maximized between 10:00AM and noon? Why does the power almost go to zero shortly after noon, and provide no extra energy after 3:00 PM?

The final claim is that this technology works better when the sun is at oblique angles. Well, the graph above shows that may be true at some angles and not other, but the problem is that it doesn't matter that much if it performs slightly better at oblique angles. There is something called the cosine problem for solar cells. If the sun hits the panel at an angle, there is less overall light on it than if it hits it straight on. It doesn't matter how cool the panel is, what cool features are on the panel, it simply can not get away from the fact that there is less light on the panel itself when the sun shines light on to the panel at an angle. The best/cheapest solution for this problem is to have a tracker, but in general people don't like these on their houses, plus it adds cost, but it can double the energy output from a panel. So, based on their own data and basic fundamental issues with non-tracking panels, this claim seems sketchy.

It's good to keep an open mind on this, perhaps this device can reduce the cost of panels by some amount, perhaps, as they show to some small degree, the performance is better than a normal solar cell. But there doesn't seem to be any actual data out there to support these claims in a way that is different than any other new solar technology.

Look for it for any new solar technology... If they hit these three things, then it is being promoted like every other new solar technology:

1) <$1/watt

2) reel-to-reel manufacturing

3) 2x-4x better than "normal" solar cells

Here is an example, can you see any relevant difference in the boasts between the Fibercell technology and say, this one? Solar technology is improving on many front. There has not been a breakthrough that will lead to the benefits that this PR extolls. There probably never will be because the costs of a solar implementation is multifaceted, its simply not just the cost of the cell itself.

But, where are the pokeberries?

Funny how most of the articles about this technology focuses on the pokeberry angle. I guess it makes good news. What do the pokeberries do? They used a dye from pokeberries that gets spread on top of the cells. It promotes the absorption of light, like it could do for any solar cell. Really, that's it. Silly, huh?